Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Bill Maher Strikes Back

On May 23, Congressman Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama, said that comments that Bill Maher made on his May 13 episode of Real Time "border on treason."

What could he have said that's so horrible? The comment in question was during Maher's New Rules segment in which he declared that since the Army is so desperate for new recruits, those that supported the war now have to fight it:

More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club. we've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies.

Treasonous? Here's Representative Bachus's definition of treason:

In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country.

I'm not a congressman, I'm a comedian. There's nothing I can really do to help or hurt our troops (although anyone who's watched my shows or read my books in the last twelve years knows I'm a pretty ardent supporter of the military).

But a congressman, there's someone who can actually DO SOMETHING to help our troops. In fact, a case could be made that it's a lot more treasonous for someone in his position to be wasting his time yelling at a comedian. Shouldn't he be training his outrage at such problems as troops not having enough armor? Wouldn't that ACTUALLY support our troops more? And citizens of this country who claim to support our troops should write this man and tell him GET BACK TO WORK! DO SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO SOLDIERS IN IRAQ!

And by the way, these "comments" were part of a longer, scripted comedy piece in the modest proposal tradition. I can see why administration supporters would want to deflect attention away from the gist of the piece, which was this: now that we can't meet our recruiting goals, maybe it's the people who were so gung ho for this war to begin with who should step up and go fight it. But of course it's always easier to distract people.